Originally, Elemental was going to have continuous turn combat. That effectively meant real-time. Ultimately, after playing around with it, we decided to implement turn based (simultaneous turns based on combat speed) with tiles.
The evolution of tactical combat in Elemental owes a lot to the beta program. 9 Months of public beta testing of the game engine with corresponding debates has led to some important changes that would not have happened otherwise.
A lot of the discussion resulted in us thinking about the game in ways we didn’t think of before. Specifically, how do we address game design issues that have plagued our genre for decades now? If you’re a strategy gamer, you know them well.
For us, the challenge of tactical combat has been about giving the player as much control as possible over how long tactical combat should last. This ultimately led to the realization that the funnest way for us turned out to be to have the strategic elements of combat very clear and well defined.
Elements of Tactical Combat
In no particular order these are the things that matter:
Remaining Questions and issues:
Tactical turn length:
I really like the ideas where combat goes for x turns, and then suspended until the next game turn. This gives a lot of room for strategic reinforcement. I'm excited by the idea of two players rushing reinforcements to a battle, and having a small pointless skirmish slowly turn into an epic battle that determines the game.
Also, on the tactical level, it gives you scenarios where you just need to hold out for the day until reinforcements arrive. Both sides of that could be fun. It would give you real reasons to play defensively or aggressively.
On a side note, it would be good if other players have full access to start making their next move, as well as watching the battle unfold.
Other mechanisms to speed up tactical play:
1. Streamlined UI -- It would be good if you didn't end up giving the same units the same orders turn after turn. Some memory would be really handy here, so at least the last command was remembered. In my opinion, the more complicated this is the better. I would gladly spend half an hour setting how a unit behaves under different situations, as opposed to selecting "Attack this guy with this weapon/spell" over and over again.
2. Crossing a Morale threshold causes all units to route. At some point, your army breaks and all units head for the hills. This will make things much faster since one of the players no longer has to do anything. It also makes morale more important. Strategically, fear based attacks, and morale boosting spells become really important. Plus, if you route an army with nowhere to retreat, then poof, they are gone.
3. Morale loss over time. Each side suffers morale each turn. This is reduced by how much damage you are dealing. This will give incentive to attack, and should force the fights to be shorter and more brutal.
4. Chess clock: If you are the last person to enter your move, the clock ticks against you. The slower player gets penalized with morale or luck modifiers.
Ohh, I love that idea!
"1. Streamlined UI -- It would be good if you didn't end up giving the same units the same orders turn after turn. Some memory would be really handy here, so at least the last command was remembered. In my opinion, the more complicated this is the better. I would gladly spend half an hour setting how a unit behaves under different situations, as opposed to selecting "Attack this guy with this weapon/spell" over and over again."
This idea has been proposed way back in the day and is still (would be) a good thing.
Make it a Right Click, get a Pop-Up, select from (6+/-) listed options (Hold, Defend, Scout, Attack etc.etc.) and it sticks with the Stack/Unit/SoV selected, until changed or unit Perishes/Retreats/Routs.
Will have to wait and see I guess.
Reminds me of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Some of those versions had "Extended battles" where if it went past the 30 days, it would suspend until the next month, and you can do stuff like that.
Of course, it doesn't seem like battles will ever last long enough to be "extended"? I think what might help is that if parties, teams, etc instead of being in one stack were actually 3 or 9 or whatever, different units on the map. So instead of having one stack of 9 archers fighting as one archer with the strength of 9 men, I'd actually have 9 archers on the field.
Probably would have to make the tactical map squares smaller, though. But still, this would give more chance of a battle being extended - just more stuff you have to defeat, which will take more time.
I like it ! I hope it will be cool... And in addition it'll make the combats close to real one.
The only question is X? How many of X combat turns/general game turn? Maybe - 24 - like hours/day?!
I guess it should be user configurable, but I was thinking something really short like 10, so other players don't have to sit around much.
Also, this would give ample time for reinforcements and strategic adjustments.
I do not support suspend, exactly. I would have to go with draws.. If you can not defeat your opponent in X turns the battle ends and you have to move onto his tile again to initiate new combat, at the power levels as they were at the end of the last combat. Depending on the movement values of the different armies/groups this could still allow for reinforcements and narrow escapes. Then in combat if facing a superior force you can deploy units in delaying tactics to give your main forces a chance of escape. If the AI had such tactical forethought it would be quite cool. I have no idea what exists in the game now in regard to escape. The video content I've seen has AI units go to the apparent edge of the tactical map and not 'escape'
With 19 pages of replies, I have not had time to read them all thoroughly, but I have scanned quite a few.
The one thing I have not seen discussed is the idea of combat fatigue.
1. Give units a stamina stat.
2. Each round of combat costs stamina, moving would cost less then fighting, special abilities (if any) could cost more to use.
3. Once stamina drops below a certain level, the unit starts to become fatigued and its offense and defense suffers accordingly.
This would limit the length of battles.
Fatigued units would also suffer greater losses when retreating.
Stamina should only be fully restored between turns.
If a unit survives a battle they should get some stamina back, but not all. This prevents a strong unit from easily destroying multiple armies in one turn.
Undead and demons should have unlimited stamina, and large magical beasts (dragons) should have a huge reserve of stamina.
harpo
I would say at least 10 turns or more. Now this should be an option that you can set for Single player and multiplayer games (2 seperate options.)
If this was in the game I would set the Single play to 24 turns like in AOW:SM because a lot can be done in that time and make the combat fun. However in multiplay I would set it to 10.
With 24 battle-turns I supposed only as a max - if battle will ends in fewer turn - ok, if not - it will continue throughout the next game-turn...
Actually the question about number of battle-turns itself under the question of suspending and continuation battle in the next game-turn. If the second will be accepted then I thing better make battle-turns more for a single game-turn - because with a fewer battle*turn/one g-turn the battle could take too murch game-turns...
...uuups...sorry, I hope my manifest don't confuse you
And of course there are must be GUI for user can choose number of battle-turns
The total war games do retreating from battles really well. You do sometimes have to do counterinsurgency to mop up armies that you shattered but didn't completely exterminate, but this doesn't hurt the game too much.
A few notes:
1. This helps promote combined arms! Light cavalry become essential to making sure that you ONLY have to fight an army once.
2. It allows you, the player, to make daring comebacks.
3. If you win by a certain margin, the whole army disappears whether or not some units got away. They do this in Medieval 2 Total War, and it works pretty well.
So yeah. I would advise against having the combat system work like GalCiv2 where the player worries incessantly about whether or not to engage, because if he engages loses he'll lose his entire fleet. Also, raiding big, lumbering armies with lighter, faster armies with the intention of withdrawing becomes impossible.
I like this idea. Although, for gold it seems like the Tactical Battles will be too simple to support something like this.
Why not go for a player choice. have it in the option menu for the player to pick wether they want the random tactic maps or to draw from the tactic map pool?
I like the random map idea. I also have a few other suggestions. I didn't read the replies to see if all have been given before.
1. This is a biggy. I don't like the attacker goes first thing. Each unit in a group should have an initiative and go by that. This could be random generated with possible bonuses or could be done by a base initiative stat. Look at HoMM series or King's bounty series if you need some ideas. For a completely against the AI, the way it is now is good. For PvP, you want an initiative based system or risk boring people.
2. Give us the option to turn off spellcasting for autocombat. It kills me to have to do normal combat for a bear because my Sov uses a spell to kill it and I have no mana for anything else.
3. Either get rid of the mega stacks that you see sometimes against the AI, or make it so area effect spells hit the whole stack. Also, never let them stack with one of your own units. I really would prefer that it be a series of combats vs a large stack. Never let me leave until all the combats are done.
well, this thread is quite old...
Thanks for bumping an old ass thread.
Even though this thread is old, I agree with:
Unit is Attacker Unit performs Surprise Attack Unit has Special Abilities that increase Initiative (e.g First Strike)
Richness Please
If you make it easy for us to TAG our Tac Battle Fields, so they add to the game in the right spots.Like each Tac Tile can have up to 2 Terrain types it could be used from, Mountains & Hills, Hills & Plains, Hills & Swamp, and so on.
Then if Fighting on Hills, any thing marked with Hills could be used.
The Main issue is these need to be added Easily, by just Dropping in a folder, or better by just Downloading the Files. If it takes DL and then editing XML, and soon it will be used less. Maybe do a running contest, take the top 20 each time and drop into a Battle Field Pack each time. Would work.
Then as a group the Community should be able to give the game a huge amount of great tiles to play on. The Swamp Tact Tile I made was an attempt to make the battle more varied using terrain.
Trigger events in Battle would be good as well, being able to set it to, Control these 3 Tiles for at least 2 turns to win the battle, or Hold this tile to allow reinforcements to arrive and so on.Also would like to see larger and more involved City Battles, where the defender can decide to Sally Forth, or to hold some units in the city. Make taking cities that are well defended a different battle than two armies meeting in open combat.
Lee
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